


Fine

by Silex



Category: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse)
Genre: Baker Family Feels, Bittersweet, Childhood Memories, Family Feels, Game: Resident Evil 7, Gen, Moving On, Nostalgia, Post-Resident Evil 7, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: After Evie Zoe tries to put things together, to figure out if things would ever be right again, if she'll ever be okay. Eventually they might, but it'll need to be a new sort of okay. It's a learning process, shaky, unbalanced and frightening, just like learning to ride a bike.She's done all that and more, so there is that.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15
Collections: Id Pro Quo 2020





	Fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Coffin Liqueur (HP_Lovecats)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HP_Lovecats/gifts).



_The first thing Zoe had done after getting out of the hospital was visit Uncle Joe. She needed to thank him and get things in order. There was a lot she needed to figure out still and Uncle Joe was good for that. He knew when she wanted someone to talk to, when she needed someone just to listen and when she needed time alone. Right now, she needed to be alone._

_This was something she needed to do for herself._

_Going back to the house she had grown up in to see it for herself._

_There wasn’t much left, Uncle Joe had warned her about that._

_He’d watched the whole thing, she was sure, because that was something he could do. The BSAA never would have seen him, but she was sure that he’d been watching everything they did as they cleared the place. The way he’d talked about it, he’d seen things like that before._

_Uncle Joe had warned her that it would be bad, asked her if she wanted him to come along, because the BSAA was long gone, and he’d accepted it when she said she wanted to go alone._

_Later she might ask him to come back with her, but for now she needed to see things for herself._

_It was part of the process._

_Uncle Joe understood that._

_There were a lot of things he understood and she was starting to get a feel for them._

_That was why she’d let him walk her through the woods to the road. He understood what she was doing and she knew he wouldn’t follow her when she started down the driveway._

_Walking down the rutted dirt and gravel path she remembered._

\---

When she was little she’d gotten a bike for her eighth birthday, bright pink with training wheels, she’d rode it around the yard, going as fast as she could, racing Lucas up and down the driveway on his bike. He always went faster than her, no matter how hard she peddled, except sometimes he’d stop half way down the driveway to look at something in the weeds to either side. He’d poke around them with a stick, or look for stones to turn over to see what was beneath.

She’d catch up and then get past him and he’d glare at her, struggle to get his bike back up and get on it and sometimes, if she was lucky, she’d beat him to the end of the driveway.

It wasn’t often, but when she did he was so angry, telling her that he hadn’t been trying, so it didn’t count. But it did, she won fair and square.

It wasn’t until she was much older that she realized that he was doing it on purpose. It wasn’t that he was a good actor, though he was, it was that it wasn’t like him to let her win in anything.

Maybe letting her win was part of the game, to get her to keep playing.

Maybe it was that he didn’t have friends of his own and didn’t want to ride his bike by himself.

Maybe it was just Lucas being Lucas and there was no point in trying to make sense of it.

He was the one that decided she needed to learn to ride without training wheels, saying that she’d be able to go faster without them. Zoe hadn’t been sure if that was true, but since Lucas’ bike didn’t have any and he went much faster than her, there was a logic to it. Not to mention the idea of riding without training wheels felt like a very grownup thing to her back then.

It wasn’t entirely without ulterior motive that Lucas took it upon himself to remove the training wheels from her bike. It turned out that he needed them for some project of his own, but that was neither here nor there.

He’d spent weeks walking her up and down the driveway, helping her get a feel for it and figure out how to balance on only two wheels. Lucas told her again and again that the faster she went the easier it was to balance, but it was hard getting speed on the bumpy driveway.

She learned though, the hard packed mud and gravel were an excellent motivator, not to mention the appeal of doing something like an adult.

After a great deal of encouragement, some not entirely playful teasing and scraped knees, she was able to ride her bike up and down the driveway and almost keep up with Lucas.

When she showed Ma and Pa what she could do they agreed that it was worth celebrating and, because the weather was warm enough, they had a picnic dinner out on the back porch.

The warm weather and feeling of being one step closer to being a grownup was intoxicating and it got both her and Lucas thinking.

Biking up and down the driveway was one thing, and Ma said it was okay for them to ride along the rode as long as they kept close together, which was fun for a while, until they got bigger ideas

Looking back, she couldn’t remember which of them had the idea in the first place, or if it had occurred fully formed to both of them at the same time, but somehow they’d come up with the idea of biking all the way to town, and not just for the sake of going there and back.

Oh no, they had far bigger plans than that. Plans and a destination.

They were going to go all the way to the ice cream parlor and, because they were going there without Ma and Pa, that meant they could get whatever they wanted from the menu without needing to ask for permission.

And there was one item, all the way down on the bottom of the menu, that no matter how they’d begged and pleaded, neither of them had ever had, the Kit and Kaboodle.

Even after all this time she could see it exactly as it was on the menu: five bananas, eleven scoops of ice cream of your choice flavors, six toppings, all covered in hot fudge, whip cream and a single cherry on top.

The Kit and Kaboodle was suggested to be eaten by four people, which would have made it perfect for her and Lucas and Ma and Pa, but they never agreed.

She and Lucas had planned the expedition in great detail, pooling their allowance, discussing which ice cream flavors they wanted and what toppings they were going to get. The merits of toasted coconut versus marshmallow sauce were debated, as well as whether or not rainbow sprinkles actually tasted better than the chocolate ones.

Somehow neither Ma nor Pa figured out their plans before they set out bright and early. Neither she nor Lucas had any idea how long it would take to get there, other than longer than it took Pa to drive.

They set out early in the morning with their money and the supplies they might need. Thermoses of water in case it got hot and peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches in case they needed to stop for lunch along the way.

Neither of them being sure of how long the trip would take, needing to stop for lunch seemed likely.

The first part of the trip was easy, the promise of ice cream and the heady feeling of being nearly a grownup meant that they seemed to fly down the road to the point where they usually turned back and headed the other way. They both slowed there, by the fallen tree that marked their previous farthest trips, as an unspoken boundary was crossed.

She and Lucas exchanged a secret smile, and then took off as fast as they could. The ice cream parlor seemed close, though they both knew they hadn’t even reached the main road yet.

There was still a long trip in front of them, but they were confident.

That confidence lasted until they reached the main road, and hot and tried, stopped for their first drink of water.

They both agreed that they were almost there, because once they got to the main road it was no time at all to town.

A little further along they stopped again, this time for sandwiches and to stretch their legs.

It was the longest either of them had ever biked straight and Zoe was tired, having a harder and harder time keeping up.

What they hadn’t considered was becoming increasingly apparent between how long it had taken them to reach the main road and how much longer the main road felt – Pa drove a lot faster than they went on their bikes.

They kept going though, watching cars zip by, eventually passing signs that they knew by heart from previous trips.

Those signs felt so far apart on bikes, as though the road had been stretched out to go on forever.

At some point Lucas stopped to let her catch up.

He was looking up at the sky, frowning.

It was, by his reckoning, nearly noon and they weren’t there yet. In fact Lucas wasn’t sure how much farther they even had to go. Going by bike was different than driving with Pa and familiar landmarks weren’t the same as they were from a car. Lucas was sure that it wasn’t much further, but he sounded doubtful.

The novelty and excitement of the trip had worn off, but they kept going, determined because they’d already made it so far.

Lucas had slowed down, but it was harder and harder for her to keep up.

They stopped to rest, drank the last of their water and discussed their situation. As far as they’d gone, they agreed turning back wasn’t an option.

Zoe was tired and ready to start crying, but she wasn’t about to in front of Lucas, not after making it so far.

Hot and tired, they had to stop and rest more and more often and each time after stretching their legs it was harder and harder to get back on their bikes until Zoe finally wasn’t able to keep going.

No amount of cajoling and taunting from Lucas could get her to get back on her bike and she sat down, bike on the ground next to her and refused to budge.

She’d done her best, gone as far as she could, but she had nothing left. It was the most tired she’d ever been, even more than when she’d tried to stay up for the new year with Ma, Pa and Lucas.

She had no idea how they were going to get home, but she was too tired to care.

Lucas called her a crybaby, but sat down next to her.

They watched the occasional car going by. There weren’t many of them and Zoe found herself imagining one of them stopping to offer her and Lucas a ride. Ma had always warned her not to talk to strangers, but did that still count if she was with Lucas? He was old enough that he almost counted as an adult, probably, and he was smart enough to look out for her.

Sure enough, eventually a truck approached and slowed down.

It was such a surprise that Zoe didn’t recognize it until Pa stepped out with a look on his face that she’d never seen on him before. He was so mad, but also afraid and Zoe couldn’t figure out why. He didn’t say a word as he picked up Lucas and Zoe’s bikes and put them in the back of the truck.

Pa didn’t even say anything for a while after they climbed in with him. Zoe sat in nervous silence, trying to figure out if they were in trouble and Lucas looked out the window.

“I don’t know what got into you kids,” Pa said at last, anger and fear starting to fade, “But your Ma was worried sick when you didn’t show up for lunch. We looked all over the house and when we didn’t find you…”

Lucas tried to explain about the ice cream and adventure and everything, but Zoe didn’t think Pa was really listening, he was just shaking his head and looking kind of confused. Zoe was sure that any moment they were going to get yelled at because she was sure that they’d done something wrong, but in the end neither of them got yelled at.

They got a big lecture when they got home about wandering off without telling Ma and Pa and how they had to be careful. Pa never even asked what they’d been doing or whose idea it had been in the first place.

\---

_That morning and every morning since she’d come back from the hospital Uncle Joe had made her coffee, with a spoonful of sweetened condensed milk in it, the way she liked it, was what he’d said. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she’d been drinking her coffee black for years now. To him she was still that little girl, wandering out of the woods, looking for someone to talk to her without any pretense. Uncle Joe was good at that and so many other things, even if he had a hard time with people._

_At the moment Uncle Joe was nowhere to be seen, but she didn’t think that he was very far away. He’d said, when he’d walked her to the road that if, at any time she needed him all she had to do was call and he’d be there._

_She knew he didn’t mean on the phone because he’d never had one for as long as she could remember, which had frustrated her to no end when she was little. She’d loved him dearly back then, thinking he was the absolute coolest adult ever. He didn’t treat her and Lucas like little kids when they went to visit him, talking to them like they were adults and she’d admired him so much for that and so many other things._

_Before he’d stepped back into the woods Uncle Joe had hugged her and told her it was okay, not like the people in the hospital had, but in a way that it really meant something. Not that it was going to be okay right away, but that in the end she’d get used to things and there’d be a new kind of okay. Maybe not one she liked, but eventually it would happen._

_Uncle Joe knew a lot about the different kinds of okay._

_Uncle Joe knew a lot about a lot of things that she had only recently come to appreciate._

\---

She remembered that Uncle Joe would come to visit when she was little, because Ma would talk about how nice it was when he came for the holidays, but Zoe couldn’t remember any of those visits.

What she did remember was the first time that Pa asked her and Lucas if the two of them wanted to visit their uncle.

They’d both said yes right away, Lucas remembering him better than she did, which was to say at all, was curious about what kind of place their uncle lived in.

They’d been expecting a ride to somewhere, possibly somewhere far into the woods, maybe down one of the overgrown dirt roads they passed on the drive to town. Or maybe the ride would be in the opposite direction, deeper into the wilderness.

Instead Pa had walked right past his truck, went about halfway down the driveway and veered off onto a wide path into the woods.

“I think this is the fastest way,” he’d said with a wink.

Lucas looked at him warily and Zoe tried to figure out what the wink was for. Was it because he was making a joke, or because it wasn’t a joke?

She and Lucas exchanged a look, but all her brother could do was shrug. He hadn’t gone to visit Uncle Joe either, so this was new to him too. The two of them had spent enough time exploring the woods around the house that they knew most of the paths. This particular one ended in the swamp, which Ma had told them not to play in because of the snakes and gators. It was kind of funny that Ma gave that warning when the whole property was swamp in the spring and she’d needed to grab a shovel to chase snakes out of the yard plenty of times.

Pa didn’t have to listen to warnings like that because he was an adult and being with him meant that they didn’t need to heed what Ma said either, apparently, because Pa reached the place where the trail dipped down and skirted the large puddles that were always there, no matter how dry it got, and kept going.

They followed him, hopping from grassy patch to grassy patch, while Pa, who was wearing his waders, just trudged straight on through.

Zoe wondered how deep the water would get and found her answer when Pa hesitated and frowned. He was looking at something.

Lucas stood on tiptoe to try and see, but he couldn’t.

Pa could though, because he nodded like he’d made up his mind about something.

“The fastest way is straight on through.”

Later, on the way back he showed them the long way around, which was the path that Zoe and Lucas would use later on when they went to visit, but that was later.

For that first visit he picked them up and carried them, Lucas first, and then her, to the old dock.

Uncle Joe’s house was visible from there and Zoe wasn’t sure of what her first impression of it really was. It was small, like a shed, but obviously lived in. A little curl of smoke rose up from the roof, so she knew there was a stove there, and there were curtains in the window.

There was a time when she thought, small as it was, that it looked like a doll house, but she wondered if it had looked like a witch’s house out of a story book that first time, because she’d been so afraid of the house.

“Don’t worry,” Pa had said, “Your Uncle Joe’s a good man, just a little different. He went…some places and what he saw stayed with him.”

It wasn’t Uncle Joe that frightened her though, she couldn’t remember him. It was the old, gray house all alone in the swamp.

If the house belonged to a fairytale witch Uncle Joe himself was a fairytale woodcutter. He was, to her young eyes, a giant of a man. Bigger and louder than Pa, if that was even possible.

How could she have forgotten someone like him? Little as she must have been, she was sure she would have been able to remember him, if nothing else of the holidays where he visited.

He greeted them, offered them coffee, which was what he’d been heating up water for on his little stove.

Lucas got a mug and so she did she, despite Ma not letting them drink coffee. It was such an adult thing to do, and Pa never even said that they couldn’t.

Which made her first sip of coffee especially disappointing. It was bitter and awful, but she still tried to drink it because it was her first cup of coffee.

Uncle Joe must have seen the look on her face because he laughed, apologized and said that he had something that would fix it.

He took her mug, Lucas’ too, and rummaged around in one of his cabinets until he found a tin of sweetened condensed milk, like what Ma used when baking.

“This’ll do the trick,” he’d said, putting a hole in the top with the funny kind of can opener that Ma called a churchkey, and put a big spoonful of the sweet milk into their coffees.

And Pa didn’t say anything, even though he knew that that kind of milk was only for baking.

Uncle Joe was right, after that the coffee was drinkable, enough so that both she and Lucas had a second cup when he offered it.

It was like magic, Pa never said a thing about it, not even that they shouldn’t tell Ma, and when they got home, Ma didn’t ask anything more than how the visit went.

And how the visit went, that had been like magic too. Uncle Joe and Pa talked about all the boring adult stuff, like working around the house, stuff being expensive, and people that she and Lucas didn’t know, but Uncle Joe would stop the conversation from time to time to ask them what they thought about something, or someone and wait for a response, even if the response was that they didn’t know.

Then he’d say that it was fine that they didn’t know, that it was probably a good thing, but he didn’t say it in the kind of condescending adult way most grownups did. With him it was like it was actually a decision they made, rather than just them being little kids.

When it was getting late they got ready to leave, because Uncle Joe said it wasn’t a good idea of Pa to be leading them around when it was dark, because Pa might get lost. Then he laughed and Pa laughed too, as though maybe it was a secret joke between the two of them, or there was a story that he might tell the next time they came to visit.

As they were leaving Uncle Joe said that the visit had been nice and he wouldn’t mind if the kids, meaning her and Lucas, came by to visit more often.

Pa had said he’d think about it and Uncle Joe had corrected him, which was how Zoe knew that he was Pa’s older brother.

Because when he said that he hadn’t been asking what Pa thought, he was asking what the kids wanted, Pa didn’t argue with him.

Lucas was the first one to ask if they could visit Uncle Joe again, because Lucas had really liked how Uncle Joe would ask him things. To Lucas this was a sign that Uncle Joe was smarter than most adults and Lucas liked smart people.

Zoe agreed with him, not about liking smart people, but that Uncle Joe was smarter than most adults.

The next visit he proved it by teaching them how to fish while he and Pa shared stories about fishing and playing out in the woods and swamp when they were boys.

Zoe, not being a boy, didn’t have much to add to the conversation, though Uncle Joe tried his best, and Lucas, not having any one to go out in the woods with also couldn’t say much, but Uncle Joe listened, actually interested as Lucas talked about the things he was building or was going to build.

Uncle Joe didn’t laugh about Lucas wanting to build a robot and a spaceship. He told Pa that he had ‘a real smart boy here’ and that it might be a good thing to get him a model rocket kit or something, just to see.

Pa wasn’t sure on the idea, and Ma didn’t like it at all, but Zoe would forever remember that as the summer of the rockets. Despite setting off dozens of them, some that Lucas and Zoe made on their own, without a kit, they never once burned down the whole woods, like Ma had worried would happen.

It didn’t take long for her and Lucas to learn the way to Uncle Joe’s on their own and go and visit whenever Ma and Pa would let them. Ma might not have liked the idea, but the most she did was warn them not to make nuisances of themselves.

It was funny, because Uncle Joe would be the first to tell them if he wasn’t in the mood for visitors and about half the time he wasn’t even there.

And when he wasn’t there the swamp and old rickety dock were too scary for the two of them to stick around and wait for him to get back from doing whatever adult things he was up to.

Lucas thought it was cool that Uncle Joe lived alone in a little house all to himself and talked about how he’d like to be the same way someday, away from people where no one could bother him.

Zoe had said the same thing, mostly because she didn’t want to be left out of the fun and because she admired Uncle Joe so much. He’d let them fish off the end of the old dock, helping them learn how to bait a hook, pull in a fish and then clean and cook it.

Lucas had thought that was neat, seeing the insides and bones of fish.

Zoe had needed to look away and Uncle Joe said that was fine too, that there were some things that some people couldn’t handle that others could. She’d thought that it was just an adult way of saying that maybe she wasn’t good at fishing or was too little to do it right, but then Uncle Joe scolded Lucas for making fun of her for needing to look away when they were gutting fish.

He’d been right about there being things that some people couldn’t handle, and since then she’d surprised herself with what she’d been able to handle. She’d had to learn.

As a child she’d worried that Uncle Joe had been lonely and brought him gifts of paper dolls and toys she made for him so he wouldn’t feel so lone. He’d appreciated them, not just because she was a little kid trying to do the right thing without understanding, but because of what her little gifts meant.

He kept them all, which showed he understood things.

A lot of things that she was only now starting to understand.

Over time her and Lucas’ visits got less and less frequent, because of school and work and other concerns, but also because as she grew up she started to feel that Uncle Joe was strange.

Lucas kept going long after she stopped. Any time things got to be too much for him he’d go and visit, right up until Evie came along.

If Uncle Joe had been more normal he might have come to check on them, make sure that Lucas was alright, but he hadn’t because he wasn’t.

Normal people didn’t live alone in a shack in a swamp, isolating themselves from normal people.

As far as he was concerned people might someday decide to not ever see anyone again.

She hadn’t asked Uncle Joe about that, but she understood.

Whatever he’d been through, whatever he’d seen, it was things that he just couldn’t talk about with anyone else.

And now she had things like that too, stories she couldn’t tell and memories that no one else would understand.

It was enough to make anyone want to hide away.

\---

_At the end of the driveway she looked at the fence that the BSAA had put there, set it up in a hurry and then left it when they were done. All she had to do was push a gap in it open a little wider and slip right through._

_She’d been told that it was fine, that the property was hers again, but slipping past the fence with its warning signs and fluttering scraps of caution tape, she still felt like she was trespassing._

_This wasn’t her place any more. The home and its happy memories belonged to the old Zoe, a younger Zoe who never met Eveline, never tried to do right by a little girl who’d been done wrong in so many ways that she didn’t even know._

_She shouldn’t have felt bad for Eveline the way she did, but having had times where she was as much in Evie’s head as her own and the other way around, she knew things that she didn’t want to._

_“Some people don’t know right or wrong the way you do, and it’s not just because they were raised wrong,” Uncle Joe had said to her, not about Eveline because it was so far before that, but when she asked him about why people could be terrible._

_The answer he gave wasn’t to her question, not exactly, but with thinking about Eveline it fit. Ma and Pa had tried to do right and in the end…_

_In the end it didn’t matter what had come of it._

_She had to move on from that._

_Taking a deep breath, she approached the house._

_Except there wasn’t a house anymore._

_The men in the BSAA had been quick and they’d been through. Everything had been burned to the ground and the ashes, she’d been told, had been hosed down with something that would leave no trace of the mold. It was perfectly safe for people now._

_She’d been told._

_Except it wasn’t though, not really._

_There was a big hole in the ground where the house should have been, full of water, leaves and charred wood and an old pop bottle that someone must have tossed away._

_For some reason that pop bottle made it easier. Imagining someone in the BSAA stopping to drink after the hot work of burning away everything that Eveline had done made it real in a safe way._

_Focusing on the bottle was a safe thing to do, better than thinking about the house that should have been there._

_She stopped near where she figured the kitchen should have been._

\---

The kitchen had belonged, undisputedly, to Ma. She had countless old cookbooks that she hardly needed to read for her favorite recipes, though she’d put them open on the counter anyway. Lucas had enjoyed helping with baking more than Zoe ever had, which meant that he always got dibs on licking the beaters when Ma was making a cake and got to eat the first cookies hot out of the oven.

That was fine though, to Zoe cooking was magic that she had no real interest in. Pa felt the same way and while Ma and Lucas cooked and baked the two of them would typically stay out of the way.

Except around holidays, then everyone was expected to help out. Ma had come from a big family, and though they lived too far away to visit, come Thanksgiving and Christmas Ma would cook like one or all of her relatives might show up unannounced and hungry.

Lucas and Zoe would be assigned to help clean the house from top to bottom and, if they finished too quickly, they’d both get conscripted into the kitchen. Pa would be there cleaning and cutting vegetables, taking things in and out of the refrigerator and helping keep track of what when in the oven when.

She and Lucas would usually have to help mix things or to find bowls and utensils for Ma, washing them when she was done so they’d be ready for whatever she needed them for next.

There was always a dispute over which of them got to put the marshmallows on top of the sweet potato casserole and who got to stuff the turkey and Ma somehow managed to always know who’d done what for the last holiday so that they each got their turn.

Thanksgiving was fun, but Christmas was better, and not just because of the gifts.

Ma would start baking at the start of the month, cookies that she only made once each year. There were the jam thumbprints, gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies in all sorts of shapes and Ma would let them help decorate, not caring if the kitchen and dining room table ended up a mess of sugar and icing. There were other cookies that Zoe never learned the proper names of, they were just such a holiday staple. Those cookies didn’t usually come from cookbooks, but from a collection of handwritten recipe cards that Ma kept in a little box in the cupboard. That little box of recipes was like magic.

Spicy round cookies dusted in powdered sugar, cookies made of layers held together by jelly, honey covered balls dotted with candied cherries and others. If she wanted to she probably could have figured out what those cookies were now, but there was no one to bake them for.

Someday though…

For Christmas Pa baked as well, though not the same as Ma.

The only cookies he made were little round chocolate ones that tasted funny. They were spicy and Ma told her and Lucas that they were only allowed one each.

Which of course meant that as soon as Ma wasn’t paying attention they would sneak another of the cookies. They were, she later learned, rum balls and Pa tended to make them potent, but for the longest time she didn’t know what was in them and that, along with why they were only allowed one each, was something she and Lucas theorized on endlessly. Pa’s claim that they were Santa’s favorite was a good one, because they did taste great with milk, but there was more to it, they both agreed on that.

Pa would also make a fruitcake. He’d start it on the first of December, chopping up all sorts of dried fruits and nuts. There was no recipe or measuring. He did it all by whatever was around and then bake the cake from memory in a process that took two days where he’d chop and cook the fruit in a sweet syrup, and then let that sit on the counter overnight. The next day he’d bake the cake and the whole house smelled like Christmas.

To Zoe that was what let her know the holiday season had started, the smell of that sweet, spicy cake filling the whole house. Pa would spend the whole time up until Christmas checking on it, keeping it wrapped in cheesecloth so that it didn’t dry out and spooning brandy onto it to keep it moist. Then, on Christmas Eve it was finally ready, they’d roast chestnuts and make popcorn in the fireplace in their little family tradition, and then, right before bed Pa would cut them all a slice of fruitcake. Ma would scold him, gently, that he was giving them too big a slice, but he’d laugh it off, saying it would help them sleep through the night.

It didn’t though, she and Lucas would be up the whole night, or as much of it as they could, hoping to catch a glimpse of Santa. They never managed, though they tried.

Somehow they always fell asleep, even when they’d sneak into each other’s room to help stay awake.

And in the morning there’d be presents under the silly, ratty looking fake tree.

They’d never had a real live tree, and Pa was the one to set up the tree each year, but that didn’t mean that their house didn’t smell like the season was supposed to.

There was Ma’s baking of course, but Ma would also gather a bunch of old shopping bags, grab the pruning shears from the shed and take Zoe and Lucas out with her to see what kinds of pine trees she could find.

There were a few in the yard, but there were also some out of the woods, escapees Ma would joke, from seeds carried away by birds, the wind or who knew what else.

They’d look around and collect an assortment of branches to twist into garlands around the house.

It was as much about getting outside and leaving Pa to get the Christmas lights untangled in peace as it was about getting branches to decorate with, but Zoe loved it none the less. It was an odd little tradition they had, but not the oddest.

That had to be Ma’s Christmas spiders.

The ornaments were all handmade, because no store sold such a thing, glass and metal beads on wires twisted and strung together into red and green and gold spiders. They were Ma’s favorite decorations, some of the last that got put up on the tree, one at a time, in just the right places. Ma kept them in their own box, and hung most of them herself, asking Pa for help if one needed to go on a branch too high for her to reach and letting Zoe and Lucas each pick one to put on the tree where they wanted.

Zoe wasn’t sure if either of them had a favorite or if the feeling of importance that came with putting Ma’s most cherished ornaments on the tree was what made it special, but for Zoe there was something magical about those decorations.

They’d always been a thing and Zoe had thought they were normal until grade school when she commented that there were no spiders on the tree in the classroom. The teacher had thought that she was worried about spiders coming in from the outside, not that the absence of what she thought were the most important decorations for a tree next to the angle on top.

Ma’s Christmas spiders were unique to her as far as Zoe knew. She said they were something she’d heard from a friend of hers years ago, about a Christmas miracle where the spider webs on an old widow’s Christmas tree turned to silver and gold. Zoe wasn’t sure she liked the idea of a story like that, a tree full of old cobwebs, but it was the kind of miracle that Ma would like.

\---

_There were spider webs across the few beams of the house that were still standing, with spiders nearly as big and gaudy as Ma’s Christmas spiders sitting in them._

_It was funny that seeing those spiders made her feel better, like they were a reminder from Ma to look for beauty in little things, or maybe to keep an eye out for small miracles._

_Like the fact that she’d survived. She couldn’t not be grateful for that, even though there were times it was rough going. She just had to be brave about it, make Pa proud because he’d taught her to be brave and face things head on._

_Lucas had taught her to be brave in a more direct way._

_A much more direct way that came to mind as she stared down into the murky water filling the foundation where the basement had been._

\---

There was a time when she was little where she’d gotten it into her head to be afraid of monsters.

She hadn’t gotten it from Ma or Pa, she was sure of that. It might have been from something she saw on TV that made her decide that there was a monster in the basement. She couldn’t remember much about it other than that it was big and loud and it terrified her.

Ma and Pa had tried to figure out what got her started on the idea. Was it from a book she’d read? Had she seen a gator in the yard? Had Lucas made up a story to frighten her?

They never managed to figure it out, though Ma reassured her endlessly that the noises she heard were just the house settling, the furnace kicking on, or a pump running if the weather had been really wet.

Pa took a more direct approach, taking her down to the basement and showing her everything there was to see there.

Every nook and cranny was investigated, every noisy pipe pointed out, the furnace explained in great detail. He brought her down on cold days so she could be there to hear when the furnace went on so she’d know what the noise was.

None of it helped though.

Pa being there made everything safe, because there was nothing to be afraid of when he was around.

It was when he wasn’t there that the basement was scary, to the point where she’d sprint past the door when walking by.

Ma’s reassurances weren’t much better, because Ma never went into the basement to check. The element of uncertainty gnawed at Zoe.

How could anyone be sure there was no monster if they didn’t check?

Especially if the monster was afraid of Pa and probably hid when it heard him coming down the stairs.

There was a monster in the basement, she was sure of it, and she was terrified of it.

Her fear was bad enough that even Lucas chipped in to help without being asked.

He strung a bunch of tin cans, old silverware and bits of junk together and hung them across her bedroom door so that she’d hear if anything tried to sneak into her room at night.

Ma and Pa hadn’t approved of that line of thinking when they’d put so much work into trying to convince her that there wasn’t a monster in the first place, but Zoe appreciated her brother’s efforts.

The only problem with his alarm system was that it only worked if she was in her room and Pa had put his foot down about a similar one being hung across the basement stairs, even though Lucas was already half finished with it when Pa saw him and told him no.

Her conviction that there was a monster in the basement got so bad she’d walk all around the house to avoid going near the basement door.

At night she’d stay up for as long as she could, begging Ma and Pa for just one more story, anything to avoid being alone.

It was the being alone that frightened her, maybe more than the monster.

The big old house they lived in meant that there was a lot of space to feel small in, which was great for hide-and-seek, but there were times when it felt too empty for the four of them.

Her being afraid drove her family up the wall, but it was Lucas who figured out the trick to solve things.

He’d done it in the way only a big brother could, but he _got_ how those things worked. While Pa reminded her that she wasn’t afraid to go through the woods alone to visit Uncle Joe and Ma talked about how fearless she was when she was climbing trees and jumping out of them with Lucas. Lucas decided that a more direct approach was necessary.

He came to her room late one night, flashlight in hand, and said that they were going down to the basement. As afraid of the monster as she was, she wasn’t going to say no to Lucas, not when it was so important that he had to get her up in the middle of the night.

She followed him, excited when he said that there was a surprise for her down there.

He led the way, and he let her hold his hand to feel safe because she was young enough that she still trusted him absolutely.

He led her down to where the furnace was and told her the gift was hidden somewhere in the room.

Then, the moment she let go of his hands, he took off running, turning the lights off behind him.

She followed the sound of his footsteps and the bouncing glow of the flashlight, watching it swing in all directions, filling the basement with patterns of moving shadow.

He outran her, rounding the corner and doing the unthinkable.

Lucas turned off the light and stopped running.

Zoe froze, even holding her breath to listen better, but there were too many other sounds in the house, crickets, creaking and the soft hum that filled all old quiet places, and the scratch of mice in the ceiling above.

Lucas must have been walking on tiptoe, or ducked away to hide somewhere because when she reached the spot where she was sure he’d been he wasn’t there.

She kept going, feeling her way along the walls and listening.

“Lucas!” She whispered, afraid of making too much noise in case something came for her.

He didn’t answer so she listened some more, waiting to hear the door close.

Her next thought was to try and make it to the stairs or the wall so she could find a light switch, but somehow she’d managed to get turned around in the dark. None of the walls she found seemed to have a light switch on them and the stairs were nowhere to be found.

She had no idea how long she spent walking in circles in the basement, just that she kept at it, too afraid to stop moving and too afraid to call out for help.

Ma and Pa were so far upstairs that there was no telling if they’d hear her, but anything in the basement would.

She was constantly vigilant, expecting to hear some out of place noise that would let her know where Lucas was or if something was sneaking up behind her.

It might have been hours of wandering, or just minutes. Time, like the darkness, grew liquid. She was sure that she could see walls, or things moving, but when she reached out there were no walls. Other times walls felt like they appeared out of nowhere and if she didn’t have her hands out in front of her, she’d bump into them.

Doors took forever to find and when she did find them she had no better idea of where she was.

She could have stumbled into a cave or another planet for how lost she was, except sometimes she’d thought she could see familiar shapes, like the furnace or doors on the walls.

Eventually it became a battle of will, her struggling to keep going despite how tired and lost she was.

She forgot what she was trying to find and what she was afraid of. All she knew was that she had to keep going.

Eventually the Lucas flipped the flashlight back on, the sudden illumination inches from her frightening her so bad she let out a little squeak of fear.

Lucas held the light up to his face, looking like a horror movie monster before he smiled at her.

“See, nothing to be afraid of,” he laughed at her, then stuck out his tongue.

And he was right.

If there’d been a monster down there it could have eaten her a dozen times over.

A hundred times even if it was big and fast enough.

There were no monsters in the basement.

Lucas taught her that first hand.

\---

_No monsters in the basement back then at least._

_There had been later on though, after Evie came to the house._

_And now, thanks to the BSAA, there were none there anymore._

_No monsters, no house, no…_

_No, she still had her family, Uncle Joe and the memory of the good times with Ma and Pa and Lucas._

_Even Lucas._

_Especially Lucas._

_He’d shown her that she could be brave and now she needed to be brave._

_It was like what Uncle Joe had done, turning away from everything, except she’d come back._

_People were different, Uncle Joe reminded her of that all the time. She was different than him, different than Ma and Pa and Lucas, and she’d find her own way._

_She’d remember the good times, she decided, save those and then move on from the past. Maybe not the same way as Uncle Joe, but everyone was different. He’d found his way and given time she’d find hers._

_She’d been through hell, come out the other side and now she just had to keep going. It might not be easy, but nothing ever was._

_Like with Lucas in the basement, she’d just keep walking, even if she didn’t know what was behind her, couldn’t see what was around her, there was nothing to be afraid of._

_She’d keep going and in the end everything would be fine._

_A new fine, a different fine, but fine none the less._


End file.
